Another Useless Rejection Slip...

While it is true that most of us don't know what we'll be doing tomorrow, or next week or next month, I at least know what I WON'T be doing in September.

I received a letter in the mail today from the University of Guelph letting me know that I WON'T be joining them in the MFA program in the upcoming fall semester.  

Was I crestfallen (one of my favourite words, by the way)?  

Well...yes...and no.  

I was looking forward to the interaction with other writers and working with folks who have successfully manoeuvred through the quagmire of Canadian publishing.  I was looking forward to honing my skills and receiving real weekly feedback.  I was looking forward to meeting a diverse group of writers from whom I could learn a little something and maybe teach a little in return.   

I was NOT looking forward to changing my writing to fit the mold of a narrow Canadian literary definition of what's fit to publish.  

Maybe I'm being unfair...maybe not.

One thing that has me wondering if I'm being unfair is the nature of the letter I got from the program director.  

It's a generic form rejection letter. 

It reads just like any generic form rejection letter you'd get from the Fiddlehead or Prism or any other Literary magazine that doesn't supply feedback.  Do I expect a painstaking point form outline of my submission package showing me what they didn't like?  It would be nice, but no, I don't expect that.  What I do expect, after a committee has apparently gone through my writing to give serious consideration to my application, is at the very least a personalized letter informing me that perhaps my writing lacked the maturity or technical finesse of the other applicants.  That maybe, perhaps, my style of writing did not display a variety of themes one would expect of a MFA program applicant.  Or maybe that my choice of subject matter didn't fit with their notion of fine Canadian literature.  Or that my BA grades were not up to par.  Or that my writing bites.

Any of that would really have been preferable to the generic form I received today.  I have a big problem with generic forms.  If you stop reading my writing after the first paragraph, for crying out loud take ten seconds to scribble that on the rejection form before you put it in the envelope.  At least that brief note will tell me that I need to work on the goddamn opening.

Anyway - end of rant.

Now...what will I be doing in September?

I'll keep you posted.

Strange Days, Indeed...

It's been a strange one here for me.

First of all, I had a very satisfying day at the key board.  Root of Evil keeps growing but I think tomorrow or the next day and the 1st draft will be finished.

Secondly - my birthday came and went and I was having a wee bit of a crisis.  I have been a little frustrated with rejections of late and after a disheartening Friday I gave myself a slap in the face and told myself to smarten up.

A wonderful thing spawned from my birthday.  In the fall we added the wonderful Willow to our family.  On Sunday my daughter gave me her big birthday secret that wasn't finished in time to share with me on my actual birthday.

My daughter found a pattern on-line and with some help from her mom cut out the material and sewed it together.

It's amazing.  It sits.  It stands and it lies down.  It has four points of articulation and it is entirely handmade.  It will live with me in the basement office.

The weather has been a roller-coaster.  Mostly we've been in the bitter grip of Arctic air but for a short, miraculous pair of days it was merely freezing.  Here are some shots of our river - normally this time of the year the flow is far less frozen.

The next thing I have truly mixed feelings about.  This morning I heard that my former employer - the one that canned me after 16 years without cause - filed for bankruptcy protection along with its US parent.  I am worried about the friends I have who still work there and the uncertainty of their futures but I predicted this three years ago and my timeline was pretty much spot on.  There's the satisfaction of "I told you so" but there's also a lot of folks not sleeping well tonight that deserved better governance of their company.  Oh, did I mention that the top five executives of the company took bonuses well in excess of one million dollars only a week before declaring bankruptcy.  Oh, there's bankruptcy all right and not all of it is fiscal.

The last thing I'll share is one of those moment you have when inspiration hits you from out of the blue.  I was washing the dishes a little while ago and my mind drifted to The Witch.  The Witch has been shelved for a while - fermenting, I guess - and as I was scrubbing something stubborn off a pan, a huge portion of the story gelled in my mind.  I now have a very good idea how to proceed with The Witch.  

I should wash the dishes more often.

Time flies...

It feels like just yesterday that I was writing about DAW’s rejection of my manuscript for Loremaster and the next thing you know it's July 18th and you're readying yourself to go on vacation.

A lot has been going on since last I posted.

Let's start with the story, The Witch. I'd wanted to keep it in the neighbourhood of 8 to 10,000 words but it just didn't want to stay there. It has grown in complexity and the characters are taking on a life of their own. I do have a bit of a cautionary tale here, though. I've been happily working on this story each day, nurturing it and watching it grow. At the end of the day I got into the unfortunate habit of simply reducing my document on the computer screen but not actually saving it. Well, Microsoft had one of their usual security updates that took control of my computer and shut it down without asking me, thank you very much. Imagine my surprise after failing to save my document to see the startup screen of my computer smiling at me one morning. "Oh well," I thought, "no problem at all. Microsoft Word has an automatic recovery system built right in and I know for damn sure that it is set to save every 10 minutes so all I have to do is start up Microsoft Word and I'm back in business." It's a really nice theory that if your computer shuts down unexpectedly Microsoft Word will step up and help you out. And you know what, most times it does... but not this time. I tried and tried but to no avail. As near as I can figure I lost nine pages of really good stuff. Fortunately, it was nine pages that I was able to improve upon during the second, forced rewrite. The Witch is shaping up to be a fine, fine tale.

I heard back from a couple of stories making the rounds. Small Town Secrets, submitted to The Missouri Review, came back with a rejection but it did have a personal note from the reader inviting me to submit other, perhaps slightly shorter work. I've since submitted Small Town Secrets to The Paris Review . I also received a rejection for the story, Just Business from Dark Recesses Press. The person who reviewed Just Business gave me a very detailed explanation regarding the story's rejection. She praised the quality of my writing but told me the story, which concerns a man with a very cavalier attitude toward human traffic, just wasn't what her readers would consider horrific or terrifying. Fair enough. I decided to submit it to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Unlike the rejection from Daw, which was a form letter and as such is to be ignored, these last two rejections actually had useful information and constructive criticism and feedback. I'm feeling optimistic.

The summer is in full swing and it's a busy time with the kids. It's a little unnerving when your five-year-old has a more active social calendar than you do. I guess I can take comfort in the fact that he is a very gregarious five-year-old. One of the things that both kids are signed up for this summer is the reading program at the local library. The five-year-old's program lasts a half hour on Wednesdays before lunch. My daughter's program is on the same day but for an hour in the afternoon. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with this floating hour and a half where I needed to be close to the library but had someone else watching the kids. The first day I use the time to run errands downtown and did a little people watching. On the second day I had no errands to run so I took a notebook with me and planted myself in this incredibly comfortable chair in a quiet section of the second floor of our local library. In the crisp air conditioning, surrounded by countless shelves of books, with the distant sound of kids on the lower level enjoying their reading club, I opened the notebook and tried to come up with something that I could exclusively write during these summer reading club times. Well, the constructive criticism for Just Business was still fresh in my mind so I decided to work on a conversation between a person who deals in very specialized merchandise and a customer. Since then the character, a British gentleman named Alastair Middleman, his family business (in continuous operation for 26 generations), his tragic past and his wayward daughter who now must be put through her apprenticeship in preparation to take over the family business have been occupying many of my waking thoughts. They promise to be an entertaining family and speaking of family...

Today, just before I decided to write this post, I was busy strapping a car carrier to the roof of the Camry in preparation for the start of our family camping vacation. We're heading out to the east coast to visit friends we've not seen in far too long. Along the way will be camping and sightseeing and generally enjoying each other's company. When I get back I'm sure there'll be a host of pictures and a great number of stories to pass along.

Till then behave and play nice.

Disappointment... and opportunity

There is a little bit of disappointing news that showed up in the mail late last week. It came in a self-addressed stamped envelope and I have to admit that as soon as I opened it I was crestfallen. (Just on a personal note, I have always loved that word-crestfallen. I don't believe there's any other of 11 letter word that can so sum up a state of utter disappointment). Inside the envelope was a lovely letter from the good people at DAW Books. It was a rejection slip for my novel, Loremaster.

Although rejection is never a fun thing, I'm forced to remind myself that rejections are the bumps on the road to publication. Some of the bumps have useful information that should be heeded and you can adjust your course. Other bumps, like this one, are generic and you just have to put up with the jostling and continue onward. The next step for Loremaster is sending it off to a different publisher but before I do I'll need to assemble a chapter by chapter synopsis. It'll take me about a day or two to make the synopsis and then we'll be ready for round two.

In other news, my witch story keeps growing and growing. It's currently sitting at about 9000 words and I get the sense that it's only about half done. I'm really enjoying writing it but, man, it has taken on a life of its own.

When I'm finished the witch story and have the synopsis written for Loremaster I'll need to turn to a promise I made the kids. Years ago, when my daughter was little, I created a story called Gerry the Giant. Both kids are reading now and both have requested that I put Gerry the Giant into words for them. There's another kids' story dancing around in my head about Bladd the Blampire. What's a Blampire? Blampires are creatures that appear at dusk, usually in closets or under beds in rooms where there are young children. Blampires are kind of like vampires except they get their nourishment from children's imaginations. They look a little scary, but you can't always trust first impressions. They are actually very, very nice. Enough said about that for now.

The voice recognition software, Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking, is working out pretty well. After a few initial hiccups (I actually just had to train the software for the word ‘hiccups’ - it thought I was saying ‘pickups’) I'm settling into the software nicely. When you're as poor a typist as I am being able to put words on paper as quickly as you can speak is a real asset.

Well, this blog entry has gone on long enough-I need to get back to that one-legged witch and the little girl that won't leave her alone.

Ahhh...

Well, here we are. My feet are getting wet in the new packaging game, but it's different this time. I'm into more of a marketing function and I'm really enjoying it so far. Instead of just concentration on selling packaging and lots of it, I am being asked to offer marketing solutions in any number of media. I'm a huge fan of learning new things and this new job promises to be a learning experience.

Writing has been sparse but as I develop my new routine I will absolutely build daily writing into the mix. My short story, Small Town Secrets, is coming along fine and should be finished this weekend. I have no idea of where I want to market it, but I'll find a home for it.

The Platinum Ticket, until recently on submission at Analog, came back with a polite form letter from Azimov's Magazine of Science Fiction. Looking at the websites they're both divisions of Dell Magazines. It appears that the editor at Analog passed the manuscript along to the good people at Azimov's. Two rejections for the price of one - what value!!! I'll polish it a bit and submit to Jim Baen's Universe.

Loremaster will be done soon. Once done, it's off to DAW.

Finally, I've mailed off my registration for the 3 Day novel contest. I'll be in the basement plodding away throughout the labour day weekend.

One last thing - I really need to change the Currently Reading section. Those books are long done. I'll do that later today and perhaps share my thought on what I've read and what I'm reading now.